See, here’s our beef with a touchscreen player: it’s hard to control it when it’s in your pocket. Ditto for cold weather when you have to use gloves. Or times when you just can’t be bothered to look at the player just to skip a track, like when you’re working out. Or driving. Or when the police officer tells you to turn down the music because he caught you fiddling with your nano while driving. And the iPod classic still has more than enough space to store every song we’ve ever heard, which makes it perfect for us because we never work out or wear gloves. Anyway, Apple just put out a firmware update for the new iPod nano to fix that (the hard-to-control part, not the storage thing).
If you own an iPhone or iPod, you’re probably aware of the Nike+ iPod feature that basically acts like a high-tech workout tracker/ pedometer for fitness junkies. Or, fitness junkies who can afford the whole kit that includes the $29 Nike+ iPod Sport Kit, a pair of Nike+ shoes that come with a tiny pocket for slipping the Sport Kit into, and an iPod nano, touch, or iPhone 3GS. Nike just came out with a new app called Nike+ GPS that’ll let you leave the iPod Sport Kit and even the shoes at home.
When photos of the tiny Apple-branded touchscreen component leaked out way before the iPod launch last week, some people seriously thought Apple was cooking up a new touchscreen “smartwatch.” Well, you all know the story by now: that screen was apparently fitted onto the new iPod nano. You can still turn it into a wristwatch though, if you don’t mind a watch with corners that stick out and you don’t care about scratching up your nano. Just clip it onto a wristband—shouldn’t be that hard to do since the nano already comes with a clip—and you’re good to go. Easy peasy. The nano’s built-in clock app and the overall look as a wristwatch kind of works, at least for people who have larger wrists. We imagine seeing third-party accessory-makers coming with wrist-strappy accessories to match the nano’s design coming out real soon.
We already know what they’re all about, more or less. But if you wanted to see the new iPod touch and nano—a.k.a: the tiny touchscreened iPod—in action, Apple just uploaded the new iPod ads on their YouTube channel. Again, there’s really nothing new on the iPod touch—it’s still basically a lighter, sleeker iPhone 4 without the phone, but with all the awesomeness that the 4’s Retina Display, FaceTime and iOS 4.1 provides. The new nano is a different story though; it’s all-new and, save for the fact that it plays music and syncs via iTunes, could have been named something totally different and it wouldn’t matter. The nano video after the break.
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So it’s finally, officially official: Steve Jobs just introduced Apple’s new iPod lineup for 2010, including a completely redesigned iPod shuffle, iPod nano, and iPod touch. No updates for the iPod classic, but since it’s still up on the store page, it’s safe to assume that our hard drive-based music player of choice hasn’t gone extinct yet.
Nothing much by way of big surprises (thanks to a load of early photo and info leaks), but a lot of stuff—stuff that we all just naturally assumed—was definitely confirmed. In fact, we’ll just go go ahead and say that all the iPod touch leaks totally ruined the surprise, because apparently, all the rumors were true: it’s kind of like the iPhone 4, but with less bulk (it’s around 2mms slimmer), no phone (of course), and since it doesn’t come with a wrap-around antenna, no antennagate issues (we’re almost certain of it. Kind of).
